


Mauve-7 Medical Designation

by pentapus



Series: Mauve-7 Medical Designation [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, IN SPACE!, M/M, Next of kin, Soulmates, Tumblr: JayDick Flash Fanwork Challenge, ish, jaydick flashfic: bad ideas, not AU just SPACE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentapus/pseuds/pentapus
Summary: “Hi,” Dick said tightly, concealing violence, “it’s me, yournext of kin.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: Mauve-7 Medical Designation [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621306
Comments: 40
Kudos: 631
Collections: Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge





	Mauve-7 Medical Designation

**Author's Note:**

> Very fast fill for JayDick Flashfic prompt "bad ideas".

“Hi,” Dick said tightly, concealing violence, “it’s me, your _next of kin_.”

“Fuck,” Jason said or tried to say, but it stuck in his teeth.

He didn’t know why Dick had said _next of kin_ like it was Jason’s fault. Actually, he didn’t know why Dick had said _next of kin_. It didn’t make sense, but right now, nothing did. The world was unfocused, and Jason had a vague sense that it had been unfocused for a while. It was a noisy feeling, not like the quiet ringing after an explosion but loud like too much was happening too fast. Jason’s brain was five minutes behind still processing that it was _bright._

He shut his eyes against the noise of -- what? Voices, a lot of them, moving about on top of busy footsteps, electrical hums. It was cold, and Dick was angry -- and _here_ , which made less sense than Dick being angry. Dick being angry was a fundamental truth of Jason’s world. It went along with Bruce being angry, which went along with frustration and silencing and cages and a flood of a hundred other awful suffocating things piling onto each other until Jason thought wildly, _Escape,_ followed quickly by, _Weapon_. He reached for his hip and the gun that should have been there. Pain lit up along his arm, echoing along his ribs. 

“Fuck!” he said, this time with more success.

“That’s in character at least,” Dick muttered. Fingers tightened on Jason’s hand, startling him as they lowered his arm gently back to his side. Jason sorted the mess of inputs he hadn’t been able to process when he’d woken, and there, yeah, he’d felt a hand on his. Dick's hand. Dick had held Jason's hand while he was unconscious. There had been an angry, hand-holding Dick Grayson at Jason’s bedside. _What the fuck._

The noise, the light, the voices -- but not Dick -- shifted into something sensible in Jason’s head, crystalizing when he got a whiff of antiseptic. He was in a goddamn Gotham ER with Dick Grayson, apparently a civilian. Dick had sounded so pissed about the next of kin, like it was Jason’s idea. That wasn’t possible, of course, except -- _fuck_ , how doped up had he been, what had he _said_ \-- 

More importantly, who _was_ Jason in this scenario? Not Red Hood, he thought, panicked. Obviously, not Red Hood. Red Hood would never have asked for _anyone_ , let alone -- except when he curled his fingers, he felt the creak of reinforced leather. His throat tightened when he tried to pull in air.

“Hood, open your eyes,” Dick said in the voice Nightwing used to command the League. 

Jason’s eyes opened, not because he was listening to Dick, but because, fuck, he was in a hospital in his gear, hoodless, and he need to know who was at his bedside, Dick or Nightwing. 

If nothing else, Nightwing he could punch. Or shoot, in a pinch, if Jason aimed carefully, and Dick was wearing one of his real combat suits instead of the stupid lightweight shit he kept around for running roofstops.

Everything went sideways when he opened his eyes.

There were no fluorescent lights or ceiling above him, only a limitless black sky scattered with stars too brilliant to be anywhere near Gotham’s light pollution. The brightness that had made him close his eyes came from work lights, the kind you saw at a crime scene or construction site. 

His first thought was outside in the boonies, maybe upstate, but there wasn’t any wind or crickets. Steel struts framed the expanse above him, leading down to curving gray hallways and porthole doors. Status lights blinked next to control screens calibrated to a color palette that didn't line up completely with the rods and cones in the human eye.

Dick’s brow furrowed as he saw Jason staring past him, struggling to put the pieces together. Dick made it harder. He wasn't dressed for porthole doors and screens just outside of the human color spectrum. He wore neither mask nor combat gear, only jeans with a paint stain on one knee and a run starting to tear on the other. His shirt had clearly been pulled out of his hamper -- in _Bludhaven_ \-- and half buttoned. He was barefoot. Meanwhile, the medic next to him had four arms and skin the color of cornflowers.

“Oh, Jesus,” Jason said, remembering. Except it still didn't make sense that Dick was here.

“Religious reference,” the alien observed, voice both reverberating and whisper quiet. Jason must have lost the earpiece that shifted their voices to the human-audible range. 

“More like religious etymological origin. It's effectively agnostic,” Dick said. 

“Ah, of course,” the alien said appreciatively. That made sense; Dick had never let the species barrier hold him back. Jason didn’t recognize this alien, which was fine because the Omarean had excellent medical services, but also _terrible_ because it meant there wasn’t going to be any chance of discretion. 

He stared desperately at the group of alien government mooks combing the crime scene, looking for his inside guy. The one with the xeno-cultural liaison license who understood the delicacy of Omarean cultural practices, in particular which ones _did not translate well._

“I didn’t,” Jason said.

Dick refocused on him, not unlike the glare of the blinding work lights behind him. “Didn’t?”

“Didn’t mark you as next of kin.”

“We don’t -- ” the medic said.

“Ok,” Dick said, sounding like he meant the opposite. 

“I _didn’t_ ,” Jason hissed. He didn’t mean to be angry about it, but it felt like a timer ticking down. Jason had to make this clear before somebody came over and explained to Dick his legal rights as Jason’s bedside hand-holder -- and also, incidentally, mentioned the legal Omerean term for bedside hand-holder, which wouldn’t, of course, be the _Omerean_ word but instead the shoddy, imprecise terminology spit out by their universal translator. 

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Dick said. “I’d say let’s focus on answering the medic’s questions, but Oofinn says that falls under their selective telepathy, so you’ve already answered them.” 

He added a heavy intensity to the words 'selective telepathy', like someone counting backwards from 10 inside their head or Talia repeating Jason's latest explanation for another dead mentor. Dick had wrinkled clothes, no shoes, and a secret identity on an alien space station to which he had apparently been whisked -- kidnapped? -- on very short notice. And now telepathy, or some limited form of it with specific but unknown rules, was in the mix. 

“There’s a consent form,” he croaked, “for the selective telepathy.”

“Ok,” Dick said. He still sounded like he wasn’t taking anything Jason said as remotely reliable. It occurred to Jason belatedly -- apparently, his brain was still about five minutes behind -- that Dick was stressed and frightened and not just because Jason was on the ground, bleeding in outer space. 

“Sorry,” Jason said. 

Dick blinked at him, expression moving through skeptical to thoughtful. That look, and Jason's involuntary reaction to it deep in his chest, chased away the last of Jason's doubts -- and any chance he had at convincing himself the Omerean medics had misinterpreted what they'd found in Jason's mind. Roy had been right about coming here. Jason looked away, grateful finally to see his personal alien Fed break away from the crowd, three hands hooked in his regulation safety straps, another scratching at the age cracks in his chin frill. 

“Frooster,” Jason said. “Did -- ”

“Yeah, kid, we got him. I told you not to get in front of those blaster packs.”

“I didn’t,” Jason said scornfully. “I still have legs, don’t I?” 

He couldn’t stop himself from darting a quick glance down his body, worried suddenly that he didn’t. Dick squeezed his hand, two quick presses, and Jason relaxed, knowing it meant _You’re in one piece_ , even though Jason hadn’t worked at Nightwing’s side since he’d crawled out of his grave. Jason set his jaw, and gripped back just so Dick would know he wasn’t in danger or a prisoner, even if four legged blue pelicans had dragged him out of bed by telling him his estranged step brother might bleed out on the other side of the milky way. 

It felt like taking a leap off a building without a line. He could tell Dick was staring at him again.

“I guess so,” Frooster said. “How many did you start with again?”

Dick snorted and then coughed like he hadn’t meant to laugh. Even the Omerean medic, Oofinn, was looking kind of fond, if Jason was reading them right. 

Dick’s laughter reminded Jason that Dick was there, which reminded Jason why he’d wanted Frooster in the first place. “Look,” he said quickly, “Dick’s got to go home. I know you’ve got your process, but I’m on a Xeno-pass, right? I told you I wanted Roy -- ”

“I know, I know, we sent the notification. He’ll meet you at the medical hub. But kid, you were under the rubble for a while, life signs at rating Mauve-7. Xeno-pass doesn’t matter at Mauve-7.”

“Mauve-7,” Dick repeated. “What happens at Mauve-7?”

Jason went tense, hissing when his ribs protested. Dick twitched, distracted momentarily from the question. The medic waited politely for Frooster, who was getting a pained look on his face, trying to remember what Jason’s glare was so emphatically communicating. Jason glared a little harder. Frooster hummed uncomfortably. 

“We call in the medical experts,” he said slowly, “and you start to qualify for some other, uh, extraneous measures. Like --" he struggled for a second, and finally came up with: "You.” 

“Me,” Dick said. “Retrieval of next of kin?”

“Ah,” Frooster said. "Um."

“Oh, no,” the medic said, “next of kin must be designated to someone on station when the Xeno-pass is granted. The real distinction at Mauve-7 is that the Station Authority pays the expense of soul-mate transport up to one galactic distance.”

“Oh,” Dick nodded, “I -- what?”

“God damn it,” Jason said. He tipped his head back, staring punishingly at the work lights above. 

“Soul-mate,” the medic repeated. “Oh, hold on, I have a digi-pamphlet.”

“What?” Dick said. His expression had gone slack like no translator was universal enough for this. Jason had never seen someone gobsmacked in real life before. Dick's hand felt like he was trying to crush concrete. Jason shoved down the fifteen-year-old Robin part of him that was trying to be hopeful that Dick hadn't let go. 

"Yeah," Jason said, trying to sound as pissed as every telepath on this station knew he wasn't, "my thoughts exactly."


End file.
